August 2007: We began with high hopes, but our Canada dream ended in
disappointment. In September, Chaya, Julia and I will be moving to the UK, to Oxford. Those interested in the details of that move are encouraged to read the sequel there. Here, I will sum up the Kingston experience.
Disappointments with Queen's University
Cognitive dissonance
I recognized from the beginning a certain amount of cognitive
dissonance in my approach to the university and the city. Determined to
be pleased and proud of my new physical and intellectual home, I sought
out supporting evidence and avoided contradictions. Queen's certainly
has the reputation of an elite institution in Canada, even if hardly
anyone outside of Canada has heard of it. Queen's is considered to be
the most competitive university for students to get into, even if the
reasons are sometimes obscure, and may be summarised by the comment of
a Toronto colleague who said of his high school cohort, "If you were
rich and white, Queen's was the place to go". Queen's is regularly
ranked near the top among Canadian research universities by Maclean's (the
relentlessly bland universal magazine of all things Canadian), even if
everyone who knows the Canadian academic scene recognises a huge gulf
in intellectual climate between the big three -- McGill, UBC, and
Toronto -- and the rest. Still, Queen's has a noble history and
great potential strengths. There is a strong medical school and
epidemiology program, internationally respected mathematical
biologists, and apparent eagerness to hire me and Julia, suggesting a
support for further growth in our areas of mathematics and statistics.
It was only much later that I recognized that cognitive dissonance is
endemic to Queen's. There are three kinds of faculty members at
Queen's. I will limit myself to the typology, without commenting on the
relative proportions: Type 1 are the people who would be a credit to
any institution of higher learning, and who are at Queen's because they
believe it is the best place for them to be, or they are otherwise
strongly attached to the university, and believe in its special
mission. These people are a mystery to me, but I believe in their
sincerity, and would not question their judgement. Type 2 landed a
position here early in the previous millennium,
were tenured as a matter of course (the main criterion for tenure until
about a decade ago being a Y chromosome*; this criterion has since been
relaxed). Type 3 professors could probably get a job somewhere
better, and might like to, but having been seduced by the exceptionally
low housing prices (and commuting times to the aristocratic manse with
the private duck pond in a
small fraction of the time you would need to get to a corresponding
sized spread in the GTA).
Such people are eager to convince themselves that Queen's is as it was,
the premier university in the united province of Canada. They will
quote to you statistics like that the students at Queen's have the
highest average school grades of those attending university in their
home province (or is it outside their home province?) and point out that Queen's is one of only three Canadian universities to have won the annual Putnam competition
in undergraduate mathematics, without mentioning that the other two
(Toronto and Waterloo) have placed among the top five nearly twenty
times each, most recently in 2006 and 2005 respectively, while Queen's
accomplished this feat three times, most recently when John Diefenbaker
was prime minister. Such people are eager to tell us about the grinding
poverty that confronts academics in the UK, the crumbling
infrastructure and choking red tape.
Statistics at Queen's
We came, as I say, with high hopes, but soon discovered that we had
been brought to Queen's perhaps with good intentions, but under false
pretenses. It would not be appropriate to go into the details of our
personal situation, but there were (and now again will be) only three
(at a generous count) statisticians as against 25 mathematicians, and
the mathematicians consequently dominate . While there is considerable
good will in some quarters directed at the principle of building up the statistics program, in practice the broad majority view statisticians as did Musil's Man Without Qualities, as 'bad mathematicians'.
I had numerous conversations which ended with the punchline, "But the
good statisticians all get better-paying jobs elsewhere," or "Their
work is mathematically shallow." Under other circumstances we might
have worked to change attitudes, but since this was both a source and
consequence of a flat retreat from what we'd understood as an implied
promise -- eagerness, really, it was held out to us -- to move Julia
from her temporary "spousal" position into a regular faculty position,
we were in a weak position. We were encouraged to throw our effort into
building up a statistics program, but there was no willingness to give
us the stability that would allow us to plan for a future there, not to
mention any promise of support or resources. (The university also
backed out from an agreement to resolve my tenure in my second year,
saying that they weren't bound by promises made in emails; only
agreements in a letter signed by the principal are valid. This is an
important point to note, for anyone reading this who may be now or in
the future negotiating with Queen's University.) This didn't seem fair
or tenable, so we are moving on.
I have some hope that the department, under new leadership, will be
taking the statistics half of its mission more seriously. On the other
hand, it must be noted that no one involved in the decision to reject
Julia for a regular faculty position has expressed any regret at the
course that events have taken, so we must assume that this was not any
kind of failure of communication, but rather a successful attempt to
undo the mistakes of the previous appointments committee that hired us.
Nor has any dean or senior person in the administration expressed any
interest in knowing why three of the four new faculty hires in the
department of the past two years are already leaving.
Kingston
Good things
Mulberry School in
Kingston seems to be one of the very few Waldorf (or, at least,
"Waldorf-inspired") schools within walking distance of a city centre --
about fifteen minutes at a brisk walk from our house. (Waldorf parents
tend to range from skeptical toward Luddite in their regard of
information technologies introduced since the Reformation, but they do
seem to love driving cars.) Chaya was in their kindergarten program,
and found it delightful. We have high hopes for her new school in
Oxford, but leaving Mulberry School is one of our greatest regrets from
Kingston.
Other to-be-missed Kingston institutions are the Sleepless Goat Cafe, where I spent many of my days working, eating, and drinking tea; the reform Jewish congregation Iyr HaMelech, with whom we celebrated many a Kabbalat Shabbat (at our own home; while Jewish reform may have history on its side, it's the soi disant orthodox who own the property, and the real-estate moguls all belong to Congregation Beth Israel).
Kingston actually has quite pleasant weather. The winters can be quite
chill, a problem for those who don't like that sort of thing, but
surprisingly sunny. It's a pleasure to be able to look up any side
street and see Lake Ontario. Wolfe Island
is anything but sensational, but it's nice to have it there, and we've
had some pleasant family excursions there. There is a plethora of
festivals in the summer, a special favourite being the Dusk Dances, which coincide (more or less) with Chaya's birthday.
Corruption
One colleague, who used to live in New Jersey commented, "In New Jersey
you knew the mob was running things. And now and then a bunch of people
would go to prison, which gave you the feeling that at least someone
was keeping a lid on things. Here, you see all the same signs of
corruption, but no one ever goes to prison."
As with Queen's it's the Lucifer effect: The corruption of a
magnificent potential is particularly dismaying. It would be hard to
expect much of Edmonton or Hamilton, but Kingston has a marvelous
location, decent weather, fascinating history (even if the citation of
every hovel that Sir John A. ever signed a lease on can be a bit
trying), a wealthy and renowned university, and a well-preserved
historic city core.
Unfortunately, the city is dominated by real-estate interests, who have
privatized most of the waterfront, with the bizarre result that there
is no public beach near downtown Kingston, and what water access there
is within several kilometres of the city centre is rocky and
uninviting. Walking along the lake is possible only for short
stretches, as most of the waterfront is taken up by highrise apartment
buildings and hotels.
Transportation
This may reflect above all my sheltered life, but I have never lived
(or even spent any significant amount of time) in a city that is so
miserably suited to bicycling, or so poorly served by public
transportation. The buses run only every half hour or so, when they run
at all (i.e., no evenings or Sundays for many routes). Even at that
they run nearly empty, so it's hard to say there's much unmet demand.
It's a cultural thing. While the great Canadian cities Montreal,
Toronto, and Vancouver are among the most liveable cities in the world,
with public transportation and pedestrian and cycling amenities ranging
from good to great, Canadians in small cities, towns, and the
countryside are wild for internal combustion. (Just for comparison,
over 80% of Kingstonians commute to work by private car, as compared
with about 55% in my old hometown of Berkeley, CA.) There are large
parts of Kingston that could not be reached in any way without
travelling on highways without even shoulders for a bicycle. And
without a private car you can forget about the much touted provincial
parks and outdoor recreation areas. There is not even a token public
transportation service to any of them.
Kingston is as well served as any place in Canada with intercity rail
service, which is to say, hardly at all. You can travel from Kingston
on Via Rail to Ottawa, Montreal or Toronto, and since all the trains
run through Toronto, there are actually about 8 trains a day -- though
with gaps of several hours in the middle of the day. The service is
passable, even if the trains are dingy and old: Apparently they were
purchased at fire-sale prices when the French SNCF modernised, without
consideration for handicap access or the colder Canadian winters.
*A slight exaggeration. The favoured means of teaching the fairer sex
their place at Queen's before the faculty unionised was to tenure them
-- thus avoiding a procedural review and potential lawsuits -- while
denying them promotion toassociate professor.